Yesterday, we had the Albums of the Year 2010: Honorable Mention, our list of 20 great albums that didn't make our album list, and today and tomorrow, we'll be counting down the Top 50 proper. We start today with Nos. 50-21, tomorrow is the Top 20.

Here is what we have coming up later this month:

December 20: Guest List: Best of 2010__
December 27:__ The Year in News

Thanks for reading, and have a great holiday. And now, on to the Top Albums of 2010...

50. Wavves

King of the Beach

[Fat Possum]

When Nathan Williams served up his new Wavves LP in August, it didn't seem like much time had passed since his insanely blown-out album just a year earlier. Inadvertently or not, Williams had become a polarizing figure in the indie world, and it seemed like he'd never really gone away. And he was definitely listening: Williams, alongside Billy Hayes and Stephen Pope-- Jay Reatard's former rhythm section-- gave their new set of songs their studio due, and the result is an intelligible, self-flagellating, high-fiving jaunt into pop-punk whose punch suggested Williams was brushing all that dirt off his shoulder. On his spinning piledriver of a single "Post Acid", the SoCal lifer sings in search of some grounding while on a bad trip: "I'm just having fun with you." That's all this was ever meant to be. -- David Bevan

49. Wild Nothing

Gemini

[Captured Tracks]

A joint partnership between Virginia's Jack Tatum and the 1980s, Wild Nothing started the year in obscurityand ended it as a residue of a lot of people's Indian summers. Perhaps that's because, like the music Gemini so lovingly references (the Go-Betweens, the Cure, Slowdive, and, above all else, Cocteau Twins), there's an easy warmth and and magnanimity to its songs. From the classic indie-pop shuffle of opener "Live in Dreams" to the 4AD-friendly psychedelia of "Summer Holiday" to the gloriously carefree gallop of "Chinatown", every single one of these songs feels like a window opening. 2010 was a banner year for fans of reverb, but for all the dreamy, swoony, swooshy, shoegazey confections to waft out of speakers over the past 12 months, few were as achingly gorgeous or as effortlessly evocative as this. --Mark Pytlik

48. Forest Swords

Dagger Paths

[Olde English Spelling Bee / No Pain in Pop]

Forest Swords-- the alias of Liverpool's Matthew Barnes-- was one of a number of acts in 2010 to attempt a critical reconsideration of goth, mining the music for its dread but setting aside any element of camp. Signed to New York's Olde English Spelling Bee, Forest Swords was often mentioned in the same breath as American acts like Salem and Balam Acab, but his sluggish tempos and general sense of resignation have more in common with England's Demdike Stare and Raime, while his dislocated dub and spindly, post-punk guitar lines echo Germany's Anika. Meanwhile, the influence of Seefeel, from neighboring Sheffield, can be heard all over Forest Swords' approach to space. (Taking those points of reference into account, Forest Swords' gloom seems more timely than merely trendy.) Dagger Paths can't ever be mistaken for anyone else, either, thanks to the jagged dovetailing of machine beats and trad, slightly stunted rock arrangements, and the way delay feedback and distended voices go rippling across the surface of it all. Only 34 minutes long, all of it spent lingering in a kind of delectable despair, it's the perfect mood piece: single-minded, but never running out of ideas. --Philip Sherburne

47. Women

Public Strain

[Jagjaguwar]

There's irony in the title of Women's second album, and not just the retrospective irony considering the onstage fight that cut their fall tour short. At first, Public Strain sounds private and subdued-- a mix of distant meditations and loose basement jams. But as the album progresses, things get more complicated. The repetition of "China Steps" is tense, the tightly wound guitar grind of "Drag Open" has a cutting wind chill, and even the Feelies-style strum of "Locust Valley" bears an insistent pulse. So when you listen to it all again, the first half sounds not so much mellow as pregnant with foreboding. In the mp3 age, making an album whose beginning depends on its end is a daring trick, but Women pulled it off on Public Strain, a looping cycle of songs that neatly inform each other. --Marc Masters

46. Matthew Dear

Black City

[Ghostly]

They call it Black City for a reason. It a place where Matthew Dear gets to leave his other guises behind. Gone is the minimalist guru and the good-natured synth-pop experimenter, replaced by a pervert, a bank robber, a manic kidnapper. Dear plays all those roles and more on his fourth and best long-player. It's a concept album where the concept is nothing more (or less) than our deepest depravities set to a skulking funk to which the Thin White Duke would nod approvingly. This is what Trent Reznor has spent much of the past 10 years trying to accomplish-- an album that balances sophistication, studio know-how, and a woozy evil into something your nightmares could dance to. So it's not too surprising when Dear takes Reznor's "Closer" pulse out for a moonless 4 a.m. test drive on "You Put a Smell on Me". With Black City, Dear offers a precisely thought-out guide to losing your mind. --Ryan Dombal

45. Gil Scott-Heron

I'm New Here

[XL]

On his first album in 16 years, Gil Scott-Heron takes the measure of his life and finds that the pain of regret is not enough to kill his pride in the man he has become. The album followed drug problems and imprisonment, but he emerges clear-eyed from his tribulations, and late-life masterwork I'm New Here stands comfortably with the best of his 1970s material. Scott-Heron's ability to probe the darkness without surrendering to it is balanced by the music, a stunning electro-blues concoction that sounds less modern than futuristic. At the center is his voice, and whether he's singing out in a baritone blues croak or speaking calmly about his childhood in Jackson, Tennessee, with his grandmother, it has weathered to become an enthralling instrument. --Joe Tangari

44. Kylesa

Spiral Shadow

[Season of Mist]

There's a whole lot of great psych-metal coming out of Georgia and its surrounding areas these days: Mastodon, Baroness, Withered, Black Tusk. And on Spiral Shadow, two-drummer Savannah monster squad Kylesa tower above all of them, heroes among heroes. Kylesa's Static Tensions was one of 2009's best metal albums-- a roiling, spitting, heaving beast of an album that never let up in its Southern sludge-boogie, hardcore fury. The grimy riffs hit just as hard on the follow-up, but the band also widens its scope, getting more downright melodic than anyone expected. Middle Eastern-tinged guitar flourishes whiz by, the grooves slow and deepen, and co-leader Phillip Cope occasionally allows himself the sort of staggering, psych-damaged guitar solo that recalls Built to Spill's Doug Martsch way more than Slayer's Kerry King. Increasingly, the band's Laura Pleasants steps to the front, her head-spun wail offering terrific counterpoint to Cope's scraggly roar. And at the center of everything sits "Don't Look Back", the sort of triumphantly bleary alt-rock anthem that we almost never get to hear anymore. --Tom Breihan

43. Tame Impala

Innerspeaker

[Modular]

There couldn't have been a less sexy M.O. for 2010 than Tame Impala's. Instead of Pet Sounds, their psychedelic lodestone is Magical Mystery Tour; the Australian band's 60s-inspired rock is plenty chill, but never wavey, witchy, or anything else too du jour. In fact, their unapologetic retro yen feels almost anachronistic, in a year when nostalgia was often filtered through digital effects and technological affect. That's not to say that it isn't a laboriously (and thrillingly) produced album, thanks in part to the mixing of Dave Fridmann, a veteran producer who has worked with the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and MGMT, among others. The froth on their fuzzboxes and buzz of their Humbuckers is never anything less than perfect; like all good stoners, they know that texture is as important as riffs. They just happen to have both in spades. There aren't a ton of stand-out songs-- the cathedral reverb, narrowly filtered vocals, and ringing harmonies do tend to blur together. But they change up keys, tempos, and rhythms enough to keep it interesting. More than that, Tame Impala always keep you on your toes, no matter how many times you think you've heard the song-- by them or any other artist. --Philip Sherburne

42. Drake

Thank Me Later

[Young Money Entertainment]

Every so often, hip-hop locates an artist who causes listeners to vehemently choose sides yet still sells a ton of records. Thank Me Later did that with Drake. Why did some people take to it? Well, I could bring up Drake's impeccable ear for beats, the pristine sequencing, or even the endearing goofiness of the lyrics, but ultimately his charm can be summed up in one line from "Over": "What am I doing? That's right, I'm doing me." Chris Rock once joked that "Mo Money, Mo Problems" was the most popular song almost nobody could relate to, and Drake's greatest accomplishment is making the same case-- that someone who has everything would trade it for a dorm room and his mother's happiness. But while Drake's personal life is undoubtedly inextricable from Thank Me Later, you don't need to be a celebrity to relate to it-- just someone who's ever felt dissatisfied with society's idea of success. --Ian Cohen

41. Delorean

Subiza

[True Panther]

In the past couple of years, the term "Balearic" has been associated with almost any sort of easygoing, luxe electronic music. It's good to remember, then, that islands like Ibiza have, for a long time, been a more moneyed, European version of the Jersey Shore. This beach culture-- and its arms-in-the-air parties featuring breakneck trance and piano-led house-- is the sonic inspiration for much of Subiza. Delorean don't seem at all ashamed of this background (see their blog) but nevertheless they've turned it into something less uncouth and more manageable-- like this feeling can be a part of your life without having to accept broad declarations of youth and escapism as some of sort of philosophy. So it's pop music, roughly. --Andrew Gaerig